Your prayers are being heard

Mary Beth Bonacci|
For the Catholic Herald

11/15/17

The late Fr. Michael Scanlan CNS FILE

By the time you read this, All Saints Day will have come and
gone. But, just to extend the feast a few more days, I want to share the story
of something that happened to me recently — something that helped give me a
fuller understanding of what we’re celebrating, and what we as Catholics
believe about the Communion of Saints.

A few weeks ago, I was working on a talk that I was scheduled to
give the following week at a women’s conference in my beloved Arlington. I was
looking forward to the trip back to my graduate school stomping grounds, as
well as the place where this column first began over 25 years ago in the Arlington Catholic Herald. So I wanted the talk to be
particularly good.

I remembered a quote from Father Michael Scanlan that I wanted to
incorporate into my remarks. Father Mike, who passed away earlier this year,
was the president of Franciscan University of Steubenville. He also was a good
friend to me and my ministry. I pulled my copy of his (excellent) autobiography
Let the Fire Fall from the bookshelf and began
thumbing through it, looking for the quote. (“I’ve found that the Lord never
calls you to Africa without first putting Africa in your heart.”) As I read, it
occurred to me that, since Father Mike’s passing, I had never asked him to pray
for me. Of course I have prayed regularly for the repose of his soul. But, as
holy a man as Father Mike was, I figured it might be a good idea to add a
request for his intercession, if he was indeed enjoying his reward as I
suspected he was.

So, sitting in the very spot I am sitting now, I simply said,
“Father Mike, please pray for me.” And, because he is not (yet) a canonized
saint, I added as I always do, “May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful
departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.”

And then I went back to work.

The next week, I traveled to Arlington, enjoyed a lovely reunion
with a lot of people, and gave my talk. I didn’t use the Father Mike quote, or
talk about him at all, because I had a lot more material than time. But it was
a successful talk nonetheless.

After it was over, I returned to my table. There, I had a brief
conversation with a religious sister who was attending the conference. We were
interrupted by others who were starting to line up to talk to me, as generally
happens to a speaker immediately after speaking. A few minutes later, she got
up from her chair and walked around the table to where I was sitting. Moving
past the others, she said somewhat hesitantly, “I hate to bother you, and I’m
not stalking you or anything, but I was praying for you during your talk. And I
felt the Lord asking me to deliver a message to you. Here it is.” She handed me
her business card, on the back of which she had written the message. It said:

“Father Michael Scanlan TOR is praying for you.”

I immediately burst into tears. I hadn’t mentioned Father Mike to
her, nor Steubenville, nor anything else related. I had given no further
thought to my brief prayer since I made it. And I certainly hadn’t told anyone
about it.

What an incredible gift — especially to me. Like many people, I
frequently struggle with the idea that my prayers aren’t heard, that in order
to be effective I need to say them a special way, or drag them out for a
prolonged period of time, or say them with an air of piety that I can never get
right.

But, sitting here at my desk, almost as an aside, I asked for his
prayers. And the Lord let me know that my prayer was heard, and that I indeed
have at least one friend praying for me in the very presence of God.

I tend to keep the personal aspects of my life personal, and this
seemed just about as personal as an aspect could be. But I also felt early on
that this particular favor was intended not just for me. It seemed clear that
God wanted others to hear about it as well. He wanted them to know that their
prayers are being heard. And that the Communion of Saints is real, that we are
indeed surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” who intercede for us.

And so, know it. You prayers — even the brief ones — are heard by
the God who loves us. And our requests for prayers are heard by the saints in heaven,
who do intercede for us.

Notice that the message said that Father Mike is praying for me.
It didn’t say that Father Mike is fixing things for me, or doing anything at
all other than praying. This is a common misconception — that we Catholics
believe that the saints are some kind of minor deities who scurry around
organizing our lives and making good things happen.

This is not what we believe. The saints aren’t gods. They’re
people like us. But they’re people who have run the race successfully and now
enjoy the beatific vision. And they pray. And their prayers, being the prayers
of pure, sanctified souls, are powerful before God.